“Toddler wage gap”: Sandberg says inequality starts with kids’ chores

CEO and member of the Board of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg gestures as she speaks during a panel”Progess toward Parity”at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 22, 2016. World leaders are holding a flurry of diplomatic meetings at the World Economic Forum and worried CEOs are debating about how to deal with this year’s volatile markets and low oil prices.(AP Photo/Michel Euler)

Schaeffer begins with a mention as to how “fascinated” Alexis de Tocqueville would be, if he were alive today, by “the rise of female entrepreneurs of the highest level, who lament inequalities facing women today and have made it their public purpose to push for women’s “success.””

She also mentions the regular gatherings and talks “about how women need to stand up to implicit (and explicit) bias in the workplace, resist the urge to fall into traditional roles, and better “embrace ambition.”” Why don’t we let women do so for themselves though, especially those who want “to fall into traditional roles,” and who know their situation and means better than those like Sheryl Sandberg.”

Sandberg is the COO of Facebook, and, as Shaeffer also describes her, “new famed women’s right’s activist.” While at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, during the “Progress Towards Parity” session, her comments were typical but no less frustrating.

She spoke of “a toddler wage gap”:

We assign our chores to our children in the United States, and it can be worse in other parts of the world… The boys are taking out the trash, it takes less time than cleaning the dishes and they get bigger allowances. We start out in our homes with these very different expectations and the time spent on these tasks is incredibly important.

Schaeffer notes that she’s surely “not alone in thinking that Sandberg is grasping at straws in a quest to stay relevant.” That’s putting it politely. Schaeffer also emphasizes that she has “been sympathetic to Sandberg’s message to women that they should “Lean In” to work.” She has also applauded her efforts which don’t reply on the government, and criticized those who have criticized Sandberg before.

Bringing it back to Tocqueville, Schaeffer notes that he would point out American women “have enjoyed more… success than ever before.” But, there is an even more important connection to that, which Shaeffer makes herself:

Still, for this “Female Entrepreneurs Club, success is still described as forever remaining an arms-length away. They’ve taken a page from gender feminists and are never satisfied with women’s choices or their success… And it’s not enough that women are choosing to do just about everything, because in Brezenski’s words, for instance, women still “get in our own way.”

Oh please, please, Sandberg, just go back to your job at Facebook if you’re going to be making such statements. It’s embarrassing that one so high up in the social media world is speaking about the United States before such a large crowd. This woman is clearly successful. What happened where she has to lecture on how “the time spent on these tasks is incredibly important.” Only in a fantasy feminist world it is. If feminists really wanted to do women a favor, they would leave them alone and stop spewing such irrelevant points.